I just noticed how when folks have a negative reputation, it shows them as 0 in the actual threads.

I just wanted to say - and I'm assuming it's intentional - that is a really clever design choice. This is so the reputation tag in the corner doesn't negatively color people's interpretations of posts, right?

I just noticed how when folks have a negative reputation, it shows them as 0 in the actual threads.

I just wanted to say - and I'm assuming it's intentional - that is a really clever design choice. This is so the reputation tag in the corner doesn't negatively color people's interpretations of posts, right?

A while back we started with a positive uprating only system with the conversion to IPS. Then due to some complaints about lack of downrating we added back downrating of a particular post. We've opted to backtrack a bit on that largely to address the largest number of issues and secondarily to fall in line with the way the next iteration of the forum software will handle this issue.

At this point in time negative downrating is no longer permitted for a particular post. There were a couple reasons for this:

1. Downrating hurts a persons reputation, so a person disagreeing with a particular point of view can have a damaging effect on the rating of a member
2. The system does not limit consecutive downrates from member A to member B, meaning one member can go and downrate every post a member has made and kill their rep
3. We *want* this to be a positive system that we can ultimately tie other participation to - for example, if we publish an article a user has created then +50 rep, or if we feature their blog + 25 rep . These amounts are just made up and don't reflect any hard decisions, but we want people to be motivated to increase their reputation. We also want reputation to be more readily impacted by what you contribute on a positive basis to the community.
4. 100% of the headaches of the reputation system have stemmed from downrating and abuse, which because of the way the software works we can't easily control
5. A negative downrate on a post tells a user absolutely nothing about the post without knowing that the downrate came from an expert on the topic - A complete noob and an expert are equals (which shouldn't be the case)

The solution thus far:
1. IPS 3.2 is moving to a system that integrates all "Like" capabilities into one system - We grabbed the 3.2 version of the "Like This" image they are incorporating into posts and put it on our forums - thumbs up is gone
2. If a user is technically wrong, then downrating never said anything about why the answer was wrong in the first place - Wrong answers will have to be reconciled the old-fashioned way.. by actual discussion. This discussion should prove to make a particular topic a better resource anyway, and that's kind of the point of the site.

So without rewriting the way the whole thing works, our path of least resistance right now is to disable downrating. This is a case of the cons of having negative ratings outweigh the pros and we dont have an interim solution.

So now all the computer nerds have their own conflict free zone on the internet. How nice. Since I can't get down rated I have little incentive not to call people computer nerds. Quite honestly, this kind pussification is whats wrong with the youth of today.

1. Clicking "Like This" means that post is bumped up,... However I just accidentally clicked it, and have no apparent way of undoing this. Frankly, such a system is made of nothing but utter fail.

2. What is wrong with flagging a post as being wrong, without actually lowering the person's reputation? As it is now it can be very easy for someone to suggest a horrible horrible idea which sounds fine in theory, but fails in actual practice. Discussions are nice and all, but you may have noticed that people often don't actually read such things. "Oh look, a solution! *some time later* Why isn't this working! *rage*"Flagging it wrong and putting a big red flag up for people if more see it as wrong then gives a visual clue of "Maybe this isn't actually correct, so read the rest of the page."

Old Username: Talroth
If your signature on a web forum takes up more space than your average post, then you are doing things wrong.

Given the arguments against, I wish the negative ratings for posts had been kept, but the rating score for individuals been nuked. Yes, saying a post is wrong is useful, but a negative five rating on a post is a more clear indication that a person is spouting bad advice than five posts from people saying that he's wrong.

Just as a personal aside from this point on I shant be 'liking' anything on the site; I have a personal distaste for the phrase/activity on something like Facebook where it at least makes a degree of sense (if I 'like' something I'll reply saying so). At least with the old system it felt more like a 'I agree with the content' thing.

If you thought there was an error with the old system you should have fixed it so you can't vote down tons of people's posts. Putting a timeout on how long before a post locks its voting might work. This current "like" system isn't even necessary. It's like the Help Wanted "only positive feedback"

I hate "facebookceing" of websites (GD.Net or any). If I want facebook, I'll login into facebook and discuss this in the GD.Net facebook fan page. Even the colour of the "Like this" button looks like a total rip-off. Probably the only good thing in favour of it, is that people already recognize it.

That being said, I like much more Youtube's and Yahoo!'s approach of showing how many people thumbed up AND how many thumbed down, each one next to the other one.

This doesn't mean let's "youtubize" GD.Net; just... get a few cool ideas. Further researching on another site's idea is great, following a trend is good, but cloning is just bad.

Yet more political correctness and Facebookification for GDNet. Yay. No hate, love like for everybody ! Group hug ! Ugh.

I mean seriously, if you feel like watering down the rating system that much is necessary, then the best thing might be to just remove it entirely. I really don't see any sense in this "Like" stuff, as much as it may currently be the hype thing to do, with all that social media craze around.

Michael brought up the point that the system would not limit consecutive downrates from user A to user B. That's a very valid concern. But how would the modified system prevent user A consecutively "liking" (God, I hate that term so much) user B, while B being his friend/alter-ego ? Abuse can go both ways. If fixing the feature is not an option, then shut it down until it can be fixed. Don't replace it with a dumbed down happy version for the Facebook/Twitter/whatever generation.

In the light of all this PC feel-good thing, I sometimes miss the evil Oluseyi from the times before he decided to become a good guy

Oh well.

Edit:

If I want facebook, I'll login into facebook and discuss this in the GD.Net facebook fan page.

I always felt the negative reputation was a double edge sword. I liked the ability to "flag" obviously incorrect material, however I sometimes felt nervous sharing more controversial opinions or advice because I would not want my reputation to plummet (although this can provide self moderation so it can also be considered a good thing).

I just don't like up and down votes for this site period. Up and down votes without context are essentially worthless. It is like saying "this is good!" but it misses why? Why is this post good or why is it bad?

This site is not YouTube and it is not Facebook. When judging the value of advice provided it is beneficial to have context rather than just simple votes. If your going to redo the system I would like to see the ability to provide reasons for an up vote or down vote...

Anyway the current "Like" system is terrible. "Liking" a post should be reserved for social networking and popularity contests. This site should not be about popular opinion or every person suggesting "lol use C++/Unity/UDK/whatever" will get a gazillion likes whether it is relevant information or not. Just because something is popular opinion does not mean that there are not other factors to consider. I just worry that those factors will get lost with the like system and it will end up degrading the quality of information that can be obtained from this site... and that is rather unfortunate.

Just my two cents (at least I don't have to worry about being down voted for it I guess lol).

Just as a personal aside from this point on I shant be 'liking' anything on the site; I have a personal distaste for the phrase/activity on something like Facebook where it at least makes a degree of sense (if I 'like' something I'll reply saying so). At least with the old system it felt more like a 'I agree with the content' thing.

I liked that post just to be annoyingly ironic, but I completely agree.

"Like" is not a suitable wording for a site like this.

We need an "Agree" option, and a "Disagree" option.

If you are worried about the effect on rating, then go with a weighted system. If 1 person goes through and rates every single post from another user down, then this should have little to no effect on that user's rating. If ten different people rate a single post by a large amount, then That has an impact on their rating.

Old Username: Talroth
If your signature on a web forum takes up more space than your average post, then you are doing things wrong.

I think we may be putting too much faith in the number associated with an individual post as being something different than it is. It's just the number of people who liked/disliked the post. In the next iteration of the software the number will be replaced with a list of people who "liked" the post. So if "Yann L" likes the post it will say so, and others aware of his considerable background can pay more attention to that post. Call it the facebook-ification if you will, but being able to rate posts *was* a commonly requested feature from the old site that we never had.

The problem is that number impacts a person's reputation, and I don't want to see people turned away for posting something that others may not like that may not be offensive whatsoever. It has lead to a feeling of some members getting picked on and sunk for posts that aren't even out of line. That's just not going to happen here. Things *can* be altered via programming the software to work differently, but we run on a limited amount of resources and we can't focus our energy into addressing all the desires for new functionality that crop up. We have to focus on a few items at a time and run with them.

Being constructive has to come back.. and it hurts the community to slap every new poster down and push them away for not knowing how we operate 'round here. Addressing in writing why somebody is wrong is important for discussion and adds to the value of a topic.

The button for disagreement has to be "Add Reply".. yes it's old-fashioned, but we've relied on thorough discussion for over 10 years now and that is one thing that has made our site a great resource for others. And if you don't want to "Like" a post then don't. The feature is optional, but it at least gives a user a sense that they have contributed something of value to the community. Can it be abused? Of course.. and so can just about anything be abused. In this case, though, people aren't going to get pushed away from the site altogether by that abuse.

The problem is that number impacts a person's reputation, and I don't want to see people turned away for posting something that others may not like that may not be offensive whatsoever. It has lead to a feeling of some members getting picked on and sunk for posts that aren't even out of line. That's just not going to happen here. Things *can* be altered via programming the software to work differently, but we run on a limited amount of resources and we can't focus our energy into addressing all the desires for new functionality that crop up. We have to focus on a few items at a time and run with them.

Well, I understand your motivations behind this and it's clear that limited resources will imposed constraints. In the end it's not much of a big deal either, there are more important things to worry about. Maybe my post above was a bit harsh, but I feel that following these social media fads devaluates this site more than it actually adds value. And that would be very unfortunate.

As someone said above, this is not a personality contest. Whether or not someone likes a certain post is largely irrelevant. What we need is a form of community moderation where people can tag outstanding posts, both positively and negatively. It's obviously impossible to force people to adhere to strictly technical considerations when rating posts. However the current "like this" system encourages quite the opposite, purely spontaneous tagging. It adds noise rather than useful information.

Would it be technically feasible to entirely remove user scoring while keeping both positive and negative per post ratings ? Or have user scores be influenced only by positive post ratings ?

I think we may be putting too much faith in the number associated with an individual post as being something different than it is. It's just the number of people who liked/disliked the post. In the next iteration of the software the number will be replaced with a list of people who "liked" the post. So if "Yann L" likes the post it will say so, and others aware of his considerable background can pay more attention to that post. Call it the facebook-ification if you will, but being able to rate posts *was* a commonly requested feature from the old site that we never had.

But can you "unlike" the post? What if I like the post one minute and it is edited to contain something I disagree with? Also how is a new user going to know about "Yann L"'s considerable background? How will they tell which users are experienced and which are not? Or will they just simply buy into whichever answer has the most likes?

The problem is that number impacts a person's reputation, and I don't want to see people turned away for posting something that others may not like that may not be offensive whatsoever. It has lead to a feeling of some members getting picked on and sunk for posts that aren't even out of line. That's just not going to happen here. Things *can* be altered via programming the software to work differently, but we run on a limited amount of resources and we can't focus our energy into addressing all the desires for new functionality that crop up. We have to focus on a few items at a time and run with them.

Being constructive has to come back.. and it hurts the community to slap every new poster down and push them away for not knowing how we operate 'round here. Addressing in writing why somebody is wrong is important for discussion and adds to the value of a topic.

What about posts that ARE out of line? The negative rep system provided some motivation to avoid being offensive and to check posts for errors. Sure there are negatives to the system but there ARE positives to the system as well.

The button for disagreement has to be "Add Reply".. yes it's old-fashioned, but we've relied on thorough discussion for over 10 years now and that is one thing that has made our site a great resource for others. And if you don't want to "Like" a post then don't. The feature is optional, but it at least gives a user a sense that they have contributed something of value to the community. Can it be abused? Of course.. and so can just about anything be abused. In this case, though, people aren't going to get pushed away from the site altogether by that abuse.

I just feel that if all answers seem equally plausible then someone will go with the post with the highest amount of likes to make a decision. Replies are great but you are assuming that A. Everyone who disagrees has time to write out a detailed explanation as to why the post is not correct and B. Has time to subsequently defend that post. The whole reason for a positive/negative vote system is that users can provide feedback on the content quickly. Writing a reply is not a quick process....

I guess I am not trying to suggest that the old system was perfect or that up/down votes are the way to go (Under the old system for instance I would have more than likely never written this, as I would have been sure to see my reputation fall for disagreeing with a staff member for instance). What I am saying is that I think for this context "Liking" is NOT the way to go. I know it seems trivial but it is also an important aspect of the site that should not be neglected. I understand that there are limited resources, but I feel that this is an area that needs to be addressed given those limited resources (Or I would not have taken the time to write two posts on the issue).

I was under the impression that GameDev was redesigned to make information easier to access and aggregate (share, sort, ect). However now you are saying that we can not innovate in the area of determining which posts contain relevant information? I must respectfully disagree with that direction.I would personally suggest something like a cloud tagging system where the most frequent tags to the post were in a bigger font... maybe show only five-seven top tag words (or make it a setting) so people can quickly tag a post with "Incorrect" or "Superb" (predefined naturally or there may be other problems). I am sure there are many ways that the community can be empowered to help sort relevant posts anyway.